After hearing my question, Xiangzi fell silent for a long time.
I started to lose patience and pressed him. "Why aren't you answering? Did you do something?"
Xiangzi sounded completely bewildered. "No, I... I don't know either... Now that you mention it, I realize... Aside from the people who come here, no one else knows what goes on around here. The folks who go out to work do talk about it, but people outside don't believe them... There are... uh, quite a few hauntings around here..."
Xiangzi spoke haltingly, but I understood the gist.
Huixiang didn't just have quite a few hauntings. It had far too many. And the stories the locals told about ghosts were pretty far-fetched; many were nothing but hearsay.
If we posted the original Huixiang ghost stories online, plenty of people would call them fake.
But I had a vague feeling that something wasn't right.
Xiangzi was just as puzzled and couldn't explain what was going on.
After hanging up, I told Skinny not to rush into it.
"Something's off about Huixiang..." I couldn't put the eerie feeling in my heart into words.
Fatty said, "If we really put it online, it might be harder to manage. Rumors don't necessarily go in the direction we want. We could end up making things worse..."
Skinny thought it over, then gave up on the idea, deflated.
The main problem was that we didn't have much money. We couldn't afford to pour a huge amount into this, unlike an entertainment company.
Skinny said, "If we had the kind of money Starlight Media throws around on publicity, we could settle this."
I didn't pay much attention to the entertainment industry. I only skimmed gossip, and knew nothing about entertainment companies.
I didn't expect Fatty to have an answer. "The production